Unspoken
by AriandEzra
Summary: Ezria drabble. Read and Review!


**Just a really short Ezria drabble. Enjoy!**

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Ezra Fitz picked up his red felt tip pen from the faux mahogany desk in the front of his classroom. Ending back up at Rosewood High had never been an intention of his after he quit. Then again, not being with Aria was never laid out in his grand scheme of plans either. And neither was having a son that didn't turn out to be his or a lying ex-girlfriend that completed the dysfunctional picture that was his life. Ezra had once been a positive person, always looking on the bright side of hardships. But when there began to be nothing left for him, his outlook began to shift.

It started on a trip for a simple coffee – Ezra walked into The Brew and saw Aria holding hands over the table with a man who looked twice his size in muscle mass. He neglected to make eye contact despite being aware she saw him, grabbed his coffee and went home to lock himself away with a bottle of scotch. It was bad when a paternity test showed up on his doorstep with results saying Malcolm wasn't his. It grew worse when Maggie confirmed that the test was true.

What did Ezra have left? He always had teaching. An open spot at Rosewood called to him like a starlet's eyes would be drawn to their name in lights.

He'd gone on dates, but they never worked out. Towards the end of the night, Ezra couldn't bring himself to want to schedule something for another time. It wasn't that the girl he'd been out with wasn't to his liking, but the plain truth was that she wasn't Aria. That alone made it not worth it to continue.

The familiar scent of chalk dust and the murmur of chatter suited Ezra just fine for means of happiness. He wouldn't ask for more – more was impossible. Asking for less would leave him dangling on the border line of depression. Uncapping his pen, he picked up the first personal narrative on the top of the pile. Ezra had assigned rough drafts of college essays for homework that week in order to prep his senior students. Unluckily for him, one of them happened to be Aria. He silently thanked fate that he hadn't read hers yet.

_Sink or Swim: Emily Fields_

It took him twenty minutes tops to complete Emily's narrative on swimming – a topic he knew she'd pick. All of his student's seemed to have inevitable topics. Except for Aria; he didn't even try to guess what she'd write about, but his bet was on her parent's divorce. Spencer wrote about her time in Radley. Hanna wrote a pair of shoes. The list went on and on monotonously.

"Ez—Mr. Fitz?" Ezra should've picked up on the clacking of linoleum outside in the hallway and the slight knock on his open door. The voice was unmistakable – Aria.

"What can I do for you, Miss Montgomery," he asked. Ezra hated the formality that they had to adjust back into. It wasn't playful as it was before – it was cold.

Aria took a few more paces into the room, but stayed far from his desk as if she was afraid Ezra would jump out and bite her like a monster in childhood nightmares. "I was wondering if you could help me with my narrative." She bit down on her lip by accident, not remembering that the action was one of Ezra's weaknesses. "I know I was supposed to turn it in, but…" Her fingers toyed with the flimsy piece of paper in her hands. Aria's brow furrowed, trying to find a logical reason. Exasperation came sooner rather than later. "Can you just look it over? Please?"

Suppressing a chuckle, Ezra let the paper flutter into his hands. "You can stay if you want. It shouldn't take more than a few minutes."

Her heeled boots clacked along the floor until Aria sat down in her desk. Ezra chose to get up and sit in the one in front of hers, turned around so that she could watch him and his handiwork. The air between them was tense – Aria and Ezra hadn't been in moments so intimate since before the demise of their relationship. Still, he tried his best to keep his eyes on her paper and she used all her self control to keep her eyes on the chalkboard just over his head.

_Downtown Rosewood never held much meaning to me. My father worked at the college their and sometimes my mother and I would visit the vintage store for clothes. On hot days we'd get ice cream at an age old parlor, but never did the area hold a significant correlation to my heart. _

_Things changed on the first day of September a year and a half ago in a musky pub. I had gone in expecting to get a warm cheeseburger to fill my empty stomach, not the heart fluttering and warm feeling of love at first sight._

_I had never been much of a believer – I used to think that love took time. And it does for a relationship to progress and grow, but it can take only seconds to fall. Romeo and Juliet had seemed silly beyond the impeccable writing. But clarity to their emotions came when a handsome stranger asked "Are you alright down there." _

Ezra looked up from her writing, stomach tightening as he read the words on the page. Aria had written about him – about _them_. She'd written about their ups and downs and the rollercoaster ride that had been their relationship. The detrimental secrets remained covered, but Aria's raw feelings towards what they had been ran ramped on the pages in between his fingertips.

"What do you think?"

"Hold on," he mumbled, continuing to read on.

_Maybe we were Romeo and Juliet – destined to be forever star crossed and never together. Happy endings weren't in our vocabulary._

"So," Aria prompted, biting down on her lip once more.

They both hadn't noticed it, but while blue and hazel flitted down to the paper in Ezra's hand, they caught on Aria's pinky finger entwined with his just as they had done a year earlier during one of their many after class flirtations. Ezra smiled slightly, causing Aria to smile as well.

"Very well written," he nodded, still not drawing his hand away from hers. "Very powerful."

"Glad you thought so," she smiled coyly.

Somewhere within the silence, something flickered between the two. An unspoken promise perhaps – one that would turn into Chinese food and a movie later that night in the comforts of Ezra's apartment.


End file.
